1. A PLC Culture: Starting to Collaborate Finding the Structure & Time To Support the PLC

2. Collaboration Schools that function as professional learning communities are always characterized by a collaborative culture. Teacher isolation is replaced with collaborative processes that are deeply embedded into the daily life of the school. Members of a PLC are not invited to work with colleagues: They are called upon to be contributing members of a collective effort to improve the schools capacity to help all students learn at high levels. (Learning by Doing, 2006)

3. Collaboration A systematic process in which we work together, interdependently, to analyze and impact professional practice in order to improve our individual and collective results (Learning by Doing, 2006)

4. The Right Things… Teachers may be collaborating, but it is important to make sure that they are focused on the right things: The 4 Big Questions: 1. What is it we want our students to learn? 2. How will know if they have learned it? 3. How will we respond when some students do not learn it? 4. How can we extend and enrich the learning for students who have demonstrated proficiency? (Learning by Doing, 2006)

5. Starting Point for Administrators Form an alliance with key people on staff Create the proper supports for collaboration- structure & time Focus on learning: need to have conversations about curriculum, assessment and instruction Otherwise, teachers will talk about what they have in common: their kids.

6. Team Structures Teachers need to meet in different ways to meet their needs: Grade level teams Content area teams Vertical teams (those who teach above and below a group of students) Electronic teams- could be across several schools connected with technology **teams need to be meaningful

7. Finding Time To Collaborate Common preparation time in the schedule Parallel scheduling: assign specialists to teach one grade level at the same time Adjusted start and end time: lengthen 4 days so that time can be banked and rescheduled for teams Shared classes: combine classes to free another team

8. Finding Time To Collaborate Group activities, events and testing: have teachers organize activities that can be supervised by non-teaching personnel Banking time: extend instructional minutes for a period of time, and end a day earlier to use this banked time PD days and staff meetings: use this time wisely- reduce whole group sessions or items that could be read in a memo

9. Collaboration Hand in Hand, We All Learn … Ultimately there are two kinds of schools: learning enriched schools and learning impoverished schools. I have yet to see a school where the learning curves…of the adults were steep upward and those of the students were not. Teachers and students go hand in hand as learners.. or they dont go at all. Roland Barth